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Wan Jaafar Wan Derahman or Waja was born in Bunga Mas, Perlis in 1955 into a family of farmers. He came to Kuala Lumpur (KL) after completing his secondary education and worked in various capacities before leaving for New Zealand to work with a company that supplies goat meat to Muslim countries. After completing his contract, he returned to KL and worked as a technician at a local Telco company before leaving to pursue art full time. Waja remembered that he was always drawing and doodling since the age of 7 but the motivation to pursue art ‘seriously’ was only kindled when he befriended Aris Aziz, the well known portrait painter who, under the tutelage of Datuk Mohd Hoessein Enas from the Angkatan Pelukis Semenanjung (APS) days, still works from his studio at the Central Market (CM). He was further encouraged when another informally trained portrait and landscape painter, Amran gave him a space in his studio to work.  Amran’s prophetic words “Mu Buat!” (You just do it!) in his thick Kelantanese Malay dialect 10 years ago still resonates powerfully with Waja till today . Since then Waja has not stop drawing and painting even with the many challenges and obstacles in his uneventful life. When he was at CM, surrounded by informally trained painters of portraits, figures and realistic images, Waja’s naïf like art was both vilified and ridiculed (his ‘loud’ and critical personality too exacerbated the situation!) It came to a point where he was ‘barred’ from painting(!) but all that changed when a tourist from Sweden spotted his works and bought some RM 8 000 worth of unframed paintings. That gave him the confidence he needed to pursue his own artistic vision regardless of all the uncalled for hostilities and oppositions. To avoid further unnecessary hassles, Waja moved to various public locations to paint and sell his works. The first was the artists’ colony at Jalan Conlay under the purview of the National Craft Agency (where the painters Yusof Ismail@ Yusof Gajah (formally of the Anak Alam collective) and Asmadi Asri @Adeputra became his friends and supporters), later he did a short stint at the old Keretapi Tanah Melayu’s (KTM) Kuala Lumpur railway station located opposite of the former site of the National Visual Arts Gallery (NVAG) before he was given a small studio space to work at NVAG’s ‘Peti Seni’ (Art Cabin)for a duration of one year, with art materials provided through the Gallery’s Artist Art Fund in 2010.

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Waja’s output is both astounding and mind boggling. His works and sketches numbered in the hundreds, though countless pieces were lost when he was forced to vacate numerous times. His brightly colored paintings, unsophisticated, crude and ‘raw’ depictions of peoples, places, buildings and animals as well as his ‘design’ works from his imagination on canvases displays a personality that borders on the obsessive. His bold use of bright and loud psychedelic colors could be read as ‘expressionist’ though he simply applies them based on a sense of what feels right without any forethought for meanings (psychologically, cultural or what not) to the colors used. Simplistic and lackadaisical though not callous but innocuous (earnest even), Waja’s oeuvre is reflective of his disposition and individuality. In his approach, there are no hints of cleverly disguised cynicism or irony. There is not even any effort of deliberation to win collective approval. His fertile outpourings are the products of child-like awe, deriving much amusement from what was observed and gratefulness for what had been experienced. To Waja, there is nothing peculiar about the way he draws or paints. He enjoys working on his paintings and accepts his abilities, well aware that the many self appointed culture and art philistines’ predictable penchant for the photo realistic figurative paintings, generic concepts of beauty and banal or perceived ‘alternative’ expressions current or limited to its milieu does not ‘get ‘what he is doing.

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Shanthamathe, whose interest in art began since her lower primary school days, did not choose the path of an artist. Though she remembers having fond memories of times when she was given papers and colors, she would sit quietly alone drawing freely and fascinated by the spiral like-patterns that emerged, she did not thought that her works were exceptional when compared to her peers in those nascent years. During her teens, she used to watch her cousin Ambimathe draw and sketched beautiful detailed figures during her pastime. This shared love for art eventually led to both of them having a joint exhibition at a hotel in Seremban in 1986. However, Shantamathe decided to go fulltime to pursue her passion for art after quitting her job four years ago, where she had worked in various professional capacities in the corporate world for many years, due to health reasons. The transition was perhaps not difficult as she never gave up drawing even when she was then leading a hectic life. She would spend time till late nights after work, with pens and markers diligently drawing patterns in exercise books or sketchpads. This is her way of de-stressing and relaxes after all the hustle and bustle at the office.

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Sometime late this year, she had her first solo exhibition of 20 or more pen and ink drawings. Entitled ‘MindSong: Rhapsody of an awakening soul’, it was held at the Pentas 2 Foyer of Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Center (KLPAC) 6th -19th August, and was extended for one more week to maximize the exposure of the works to the public. Shantamathe’s works, a series of powerful ‘automatic’ drawings, was hailed as “extraordinary” and “primordial” by Wade Davis, Explorer-in-residence of the National Geographic and “profound” and “extremely compelling” by Dr. David Linden, Professor of Neuroscience, from the John Hopkins University, School of Medicine.

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 When asked to explicate the ideas or the motives behind her intricate works, she admitted that they were not based on any ideas or philosophy though she had read more than a smattering of spiritual literature. She has no forethought or intentions of expressing anything through them, rather she says ‘it is like as if I just connected with my feelings and body and allow the ‘drawings’ to take its own shape.’ The outcome of the works often surprises her as well as others. When alluding to the title of the exhibition, which connotes spiritual aspects, Shantamathe is of the opinion that ‘the titles given to my paintings are just what I personally “feel’ about them. As you can see, they are mere patterns drawn without an idea or plan in the mind. Sometimes when I gaze at them for a long time I just tend to feel that they could be an unconscious expression of something universal. I may be right or wrong about it. This is just my point of view”.  Comfortable with non-objective readings of her works, Shantamathe is perfectly open to different interpretations of her subliminal outpourings, “who knows, someone else may see or perceive something in my drawings that just may never have occurred to me”.

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What are most striking and distinctive about her works are the meticulously rendered and varied patterns, swimming harmoniously within fluid organic forms. It was noted in an interview elsewhere that she is able to produce these complicated patterns with greater ease and speed after recovering from a near fatal illness. This observation however does not do justice to her artistry. Perhaps the artists whom she admired could shed some light on her artistic development instead.  “When I was young I liked famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Piccaso. I was truly inspired by them. I admired Leonardo for his versatility and the details in his artworks. Van Gogh’s art simply moved me. I could get ‘lost’ in his paintings. I admired Piccaso for his invention of Cubism. But I Leonardo is my favourite artist. I remember watching a documentary on his life on television when I was little and was so drawn to the perfection of details he showed in all his paintings. Since then whenever I drew, I would try to give special attention to details”.

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As of now, Shantamathe, who cites her sister in law, Michele, a sculptor-painter and her niece   Xygarathma Lebibi as her main influences and supporters, is at a place and moment in her life where she is contented just to trust and follow the flow, to be led wherever her passion and artistic intuition will take her.

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Sofian Sharifudin @ Pyanz Henna’s foray into visual arts almost 12 years ago began as a pastime.  Born in 1973, Pyanz has always been interested in art since high school. Though he worked in various capacities after leaving school, Pyanz kept his interest alive by drawing and painting. At that time, he was using conventional art materials that were available in the market. However, he began to experiment with Henna as an art material in 2005 when he saw how it was applied on the hands of brides, and the results fascinated him.  Henna or Inai in Malay, is derived from the Henna tree and has been used for centuries in various parts of the world as medicine and in cultural practices as a dye for skin, fingernails, hair leather and wool.  Motifs and designs as body decorations using this material are still popular during festive occasions especially during weddings as “Henna was regarded as having Barakah (blessings), and was applied for luck as well as joy and beauty”1 . His fulltime job as a financial consultant for a unit trust company with flexi-hours gave Pyanz much time to continue exploring and experimenting with this material in his works.

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On the ideas behind his works, Pyanz is inclined towards highlighting the relationships between various aspects of life’s journey and its interpretation by each individual. The human soul is given to flights of fancies and constantly shifts between fantasy and reality.  That is why he uses the Malay Awan Larat motif that is commonly found in traditional woodcarvings and decorations as symbols in his works. Other motifs that have found its way into Pyanz’s works include ‘native contemporary’, psychedelic as well as tribal designs, which came by way of exchanges of ideas with a fellow henna artist from Thailand. Back then, the black henna that was used in body art was not widely available. Pyanz had to travel to Bangkok to procure supplies from this artist. It took Pyanz about a year before he transferred the motifs and designs for body art, combining it images from his imagination onto canvas.

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Pyanz also formulated the ingredients to strengthen the material and once applied on the canvas, the Henna is able to last for years.  Once dried its textures contributes to the unique ‘look’ of this medium. Though ‘real’ henna is only available in the deep reddish brown, Pyanz overcomes the limitation of colors in this material by applying acrylic and other conventional media to enhance the overall effect.  As a self taught painter, Pyanz cites the late Datuk Mohd Hoessein Enas, Dato’ Syed Ahmad Jamal, Mazeli Mat Som and Datuk Chuah Thean Teng and others as art masters whom he admires greatly. Though he has a healthy respect for these pioneers of modern Malaysian art, Pyanz’s approach is unique as he is currently the only painter working with this medium in the country today. Pyanz does not have any high any highfalutin ideas about himself or his art, his only earnest wish is to be able to produce works of the highest quality with its own merits whereby it can be accepted and appreciated by art lovers.

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